Lord Harland

After the summer grain was put into storage, the grain reserves in Harland territory increased to about 35,000 tons.

This year, 8,000 tons of grain were obtained from the Baron of Harden. In recent months, only about 2,000 tons were consumed to feed the indentured slaves who migrated from the Baron of Harden.

Adding last year's grain reserves and this year's summer grain, the huge warehouse built in the territory was actually somewhat insufficient.

Judging from this year's situation, I'm afraid the autumn grain harvest will also be bumper.

In addition to the grain harvested by free people, 35,000 tons of grain could be harvested by relying on indentured servants.

The Harland territory now has a population of more than 100,000 and cannot consume 70,000 tons of grain.

Although the population of the territory has increased, Richard no longer needs to bear the burden of the free people's rations. Richard only plans to reserve 10,000 tons of grain. They also left 30,000 tons of rations for more than 80,000 indentured slaves to grow grain.

The remaining 30,000 tons of grain can be sold.

Thirty thousand tons of grain will seriously impact the price of grain in the Heihebao market.

Richard once again found Sanji Tara to see if he could continue to exchange food for slaves this year.

Trading directly with Duke Edward can save a lot of time and procedures. Without grain merchants and slave merchants peeling off layers of skin, it would be beneficial to both parties.

Although Duke Edward had a bumper harvest this year, the food reserves were still far from enough.

After Richard came to the door, Sanji Tara said directly: "The price of food this year is lower than last year, and the premium on food is gone. Thirty thousand tons of food are valued at 60,000 gold coins, which can be exchanged for about 4,000 households." Qing Strong men and women account for half of the population, and the total population is about 12,000.

After all, the elderly and children are not worth anything, they are all given away. The average price for young men and women is about ten gold coins each. "

Purchase people from the slave market. The market price of a male slave in his twenties is about twenty gold coins.

An ordinary person's annual salary is between three and four gold coins. In addition to food, clothing, housing and transportation, the annual income of raising a slave is two gold coins and six silver coins. It would take eight years to recoup the cost of purchasing a slave in his prime, and the longer the slave lived, the more profitable it would be.

Therefore, normal slave owners do not treat slaves harshly and basically allow them to eat and drink well.

Because the elderly and children who lost money were purchased, and slaves were purchased as a family unit, the price of slaves in their prime was often about 30% cheaper.

When slave traders captured slaves, in order to prevent slaves from resisting and escaping, they would usually capture all their wives, children, and parents.

A strong slave will not resist if his family is a hostage.

Many lords, in order to make slaves settle down and prevent them from escaping easily, would often buy the entire family to enrich their household registration.

In fact, even American farmers in their previous lives used the same procedure to purchase slaves, often purchasing a complete family of black slaves.

Farmers in the South also went to the slave market to buy female black slaves and give the male black slaves wives so that the slaves could reproduce more people.

Richard completed the delivery of grain at Heihe Fort, waited for more than ten days, and accepted 4,000 households of serfs from Duke Edward.

In the past two years, Richard purchased 4,800 households of serfs from Edward's territory, with a total population of 16,500.

If the administrator of Edward's territory was not a fool, he would definitely plant spies among these people.

After all, the Haaland family is already the most powerful noble in Geda Province, second only to the great nobles in importance.

Moreover, the Harland Territory has also developed many new technologies and produced many high-value commodities.

Duke Edward must have put great effort into acquiring the steel production technology, hemostatic ointment formula, weaving technology, and brown sugar production technology in the Harland territory.

Richard knew this very well.

The slaves purchased from Duke Edward were not trusted in Richard's heart.

It is impossible to select from this group of people when recruiting workers or conscripting soldiers.

For this group of indentured slaves, Richard would only scatter them in the two baronies of Stopa and Dirham and let them engage in agricultural cultivation.

Because of the territory's law prohibiting migration, it is difficult for these spies hidden among slaves to have access to the secrets of the territory, and the secrets of the territory will not be leaked at all in a short period of time.

Even the indentured slaves transferred from the Baron of Harden were more reliable in Richard's mind than the slaves exchanged from the Duke of Edward.

After settling the new indentured slaves, Richard immediately arranged manpower to count the population of the territory.

By August, Harland Territory had a population of 118,000.

Because the fertility rate in Harland Territory is very high, reaching about 5%, by the end of the year, the total population should be close to 120,000, catching up with the Cisse family.

The autumn harvest has started in August.

The autumn harvest has been very busy these days. Even the students of He'an Primary School were mobilized by Richard to count the harvest of autumn grain and be responsible for the collection of public grain.

The Harland Territory stipulated that when free people paid land taxes, they could pay in coins or in kind.

Ordinary civilians have only a small amount of cash income. If they must pay coins, it will bring a heavy tax burden to the free people.

The middle and upper classes of society, such as businessmen, gentry, professionals, and bureaucrats, will use deflationary means to pass on taxes. As long as they use very little cash, they can obtain physical goods of higher value.

In order to exchange money to pay taxes, ordinary people can only sell grain, fruits, livestock, and even farmland at low prices.

The history that Richard knew in his previous life was that Zhang Juzheng in the Ming Dynasty carried out tax reforms, which required taxes to be paid in silver. As a result, it increased the burden on the people and accelerated the speed of land annexation. Although the money was obtained in a short time, it had the opposite effect. In fact, to a certain extent It accelerated the pace of the Ming Dynasty's subjugation.

The tax system of the Han and Tang Dynasties collected both physical goods and coins, and there was no problem of fire consumption. Even at the end of the dynasty, the burden on the people was lighter than at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the state treasury also had more income.

During the Manchu and Qing dynasties, after the tenants were brought into their own households and those who were consumed by the public were returned to the public, the burden on the people was also reduced, and the government had more tax revenue.

The fall of the Tang, Song and Qing dynasties was not due to tax issues.

Even in later republics, when collecting land taxes, the main thing was to pay public grain.

It was not until the 1990s that cash collection was the main method.

However, if the cadres who collect taxes go to the countryside and have no money, they can still use grain to offset the taxes.

Therefore, in an era of deflation, taxes must be collected both in kind and in currency.

By this fall, there were more than 8,000 freedmen who had completed their five-year contract.

However, they have not divided their fields this year and do not need to pay taxes for the time being.

After gaining freedom, Richard allocated houses, farmland, farm tools, rations, seeds and clothes to each family. These supplies will be converted into coins and they will be repaid slowly in the form of low-interest loans.

The interest rate on this loan is very low, about 3% per year.

Now this money is included in the installment payment for house purchase, and after one year, the income will be about a few hundred gold coins.

After next spring, the city hall will rent them cattle for farming.

From the perspective of land tax, the tax increase this year is relatively small, only about 4,200 gold coins.

By next year, the field tax revenue will increase to more than 6,000 gold coins.

The annual field tax of six thousand gold coins ranks third in the territory's fiscal revenue after steel and woolen textiles. It is already considered an important income for the territory.

As the number of freedmen increased, more and more fields were divided.

If all the indentured slaves in the territory become free people and all are assigned fields, the income from the field tax can reach 30,000 gold coins a year.

Although taxes are low now, Richard has actually severely squeezed the labor force of indentured servants and can obtain more physical commodity income every year.

The grain sold this year alone exceeded 60,000 gold coins. It's just that Richard exchanged 60,000 gold coins for 12,000 people.

If the population of 120,000 in Harland territory were converted into money, it could be exchanged for 600,000 gold coins in cash.

Richard has been running the territory for eight years, and has accumulated a population of 120,000 from scratch, more than 500,000 acres of farmland, more than 20 mines, more than 10,000 acres of orchards, thousands of acres of brown sugar plantations, and hundreds of acres of medicinal plantations. Hundreds of thousands of sheep, thousands of cattle, thousands of skilled workers, and four thousand well-equipped troops.

The total of these assets can't even be defeated by two million gold coins.

He has been running the territory for eight years and has already caught up with the accumulation of three generations of the Cisse family.

Such an achievement can be regarded as shocking.

Even the big shots in the royal capital began to pay attention to Richard, knowing that there was such a young hereditary nobleman in the northern Xinjiang region who was good at inventing, managing territory, and was also proficient in martial arts.

Before the autumn harvest was completed, Richard received intelligence that more than a dozen people were missing in the Harland Valley.

More than a dozen people were missing, and Richard did not dare to neglect. He immediately mobilized elite soldiers from the territory and set up an investigation team.

The investigation team totaled more than a hundred people. In addition to the experienced demon hunting team members, Richard also recruited 30 people from the Warcraft Cavalry.

In order to ensure nothing goes wrong, both Richard and Sophia personally participated in the investigation mission.

The investigation team also includes people with special talents such as Powell, Ruiz, and Luciano.

Using Powell's extraordinary sense of smell, the investigation team carefully searched the Harland Valley and soon discovered anomalies.

It turns out that an ogre tribe migrated near the Harland Valley.

Ogres are the two overlords of the Eagle Mountains and are mainly active in the west of the Eagle Mountains.

There are some ogre tribes in the northern part of the Dukedom of Edward. They go down to the mountains every winter to capture some humans for food.

There are occasionally some ogres in Gascoigne Province, but they are not common.

An ogre appeared in Harland's territory. Richard did not dare to neglect and immediately reported it to the Church of Dawn.

The ogre tribe has a strong backer behind it and cannot be killed easily.

Destroying the ogre tribe will provoke revenge from the legendary ogre.

Richard also didn't know whether the Grant Kingdom had signed a contract with the legendary ogre. If he killed the younger one and provoked the older one, the Star Necklace would have to be exposed in advance.

Exposing the bottle of starlight will definitely attract the prying eyes of the great nobles, and there will definitely be trouble in the Harland territory.

Richard would not let things develop to this point unless it was absolutely necessary.

After receiving the news, Sanders rushed to the Halland Valley with two priests.

Ruiz had extraordinary vision and personally carried out the reconnaissance mission. He quickly figured out the size of the ogre tribe and found that there were twenty male ogres, sixteen female ogres, and nine There is an ogre cub, and a two-headed ogre magician, who looks like a high-level professional.

Although the number is small, the strength of this ogre tribe is quite impressive.